A former US police officer calls for an end to the impunity of thugs.

If thugs find a police officer in their midst, they typically regard that person as a traitor to their gang.

The racism of the thugs' violence is a secondary wrong: if the people beaten, framed, maimed, and killed were distributed evenly among all ethnic groups, it would still be unacceptable. For thugs to increase their violence against whites until it matches their violence against blacks would not be an improvement. Rather, we must make them decrease their violence against black Americans.

China has become steadily more repressive since Xi Jinping took power.

We think of Alaska as a cold place, but Anchorage has not had a below-0-Farenheit temperature in all of 2014.

The US released 28 prisoners from Guantanamo during 2014, leaving 127.

It would take over 5 more years to close the prison if this rate of release continues. However, before that it would collide with the US intention to keep some people in prison for life without trial.

The ten most extreme nasty things US schools did in 2014 in the name of "zero tolerance".

These are the worst examples of rigid and extreme enforcement of rules. What worries me more is the general attitude of rigid and extreme enforcement which pervades US schools.